Chapter VI.



Good Old Bess.


Supper was over at Shingle Hut, and we were all seated round the fire--all
except Joe. He was mousing. He stood on the sofa with one ear to the
wall in a listening attitude, and brandished a table-fork. There were
mice--mobs of them--between the slabs and the paper--layers of newspapers
that had been pasted one on the other for years until they were an inch
thick; and whenever Joe located a mouse he drove the fork into the wall
and pinned it--or reckoned he did.

Dad sat pensively at one corner of the fire-place--Dave at the other with
his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his palms.

"Think you could ride a race, Dave?" asked Dad.

"Yairs," answered Dave, without taking his eyes off the fire, or his chin
from his palms--"could, I suppose, if I'd a pair o' lighter boots 'n
these."

Again they reflected.

Joe triumphantly held up the mutilated form of a murdered mouse and
invited the household to "Look!" No one heeded him.